Podcast

Recent Comments

About The IGF

IndieGames.com is presented by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, which runs the Independent Games Festival & Summit every year at Game Developers Conference. The company (producer of the Game Developers Conference series, Gamasutra.com and Game Developer magazine) established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers.

"Adding juiciness to your game makes your game better 100% of the time, guaranteed," insists Crayon Physics Deluxe developer Petri Purho in a talk given at the Nordic Game Indie Night 2012 last week. Purho and jesus vs. dinosaurs creator Martin Jonasson spent 15 minutes describing how to make a bland Breakout clone into something more enjoyable, without changing its core mechanic.

Using different equations in their code (which could be tweaked via an easily accessible menu) afforded the ordinary Breakout clone more audio-visual character. Changes made to the introduction of the stage, the paddle's traversal, the ball's impact animations and behaviors, and different sound effects and background music all add the requisite juice to make Juicy Breakout feel like a "real game," as Purho put it.

The two have provided the exemplary Juicy Breakout and its dev menu (press ESC) to experiment with the juicy, tween-y variables.